Have you ever witnessed something so incredible that you had to tell someone else about it…immediately! The following is a story I wrote based on John’s account of the Woman at the Well. Enjoy.
“Oh, this infernal heat!” the woman thought as she loaded up the large ceramic pots on the shoulder yoke in preparation for her daily journey to the village’s water source.
“It wouldn’t be so hot if I could just go to the well early in the mornings like the rest of the women around here,” she grumbled to herself and she placed the stick on her back and made her way out of the tent.
“But, then again, I’m not like the other women around here, am I?” the woman sighed.
It was true...she wasn’t like the others. In the past 10 years, she married and been divorced by five men. In truth, many of them were loathsome and horrible to her. The men that married her expected too much – and at the same time, so very little. All they wanted in a wife was a person to clean the house and make the suppers and fetch the water – it was enough to drive an independent woman insane! She had ideas and talents and things to accomplish much bigger than what a domestic agenda could afford.
And she…well, she was no prize either. Though quite good looking in her youth, the years of abuse and emotional neglect had brought a hardness to her face that made her look much older than she was. She was very capable of love, oh, yes indeed, and many men – even married men – from that village could attest to that! But even the immediate gratification that came from being wanted and needed soon fizzled once the moment was over. No, that wasn’t the kind of love she wanted to give, nor receive for that matter. She wanted a man who could look into her eyes and tell her she had worth, that she could do anything she set her mind to – a man that could see into her needy soul, not just her physical form.
“Good afternoon, Sumi, Jarubi,” she said cordially, passing two women as she walked to the outskirts of town. But her smile met hollow faces, expressionless and unchanged – as though no one had just spoken a word to them. Once her friends, they were now both married to her ex-husbands and any relationship they’d previously enjoyed was over, to be sure.
Indeed, she was a nobody to so many: a social outcast, of a race that many viewed to be muddied and ignoble, and above all that, a woman. In fact, most of her previous lovers prized their precious goats above her! How ridiculous was that - that livestock surpassed the place of a woman in a society…and yet it was true. And as the woman had grown wise to the system and subsequently shunned her traditional role in a world she didn’t help build, she slowly but surely found herself where she was today…alone…on the road to the well…in the heat of the day…and tomorrow would be no different.
Yet, as she neared the place where she would draw water, she saw a man sitting there, reclined against the well, enjoying the shade of the nearby Joshua tree.
“Who is that?” she pondered as she stepped awkwardly on the rocky path.
She knew every man for miles. Some of them, she knew really well – but not this one. Something about him was different. And then she knew it all at once…
“Oh great! It’s a Jew!” she screamed on the inside. “Isn’t it enough that my own people think I’m a loser…only to come here and get ridiculed even further by this ‘holier than thou’ chauvinist pig! If I’m lucky, he won’t even speak to me.”
How used she was to being ignored. And as she took her last few steps and unloaded her precarious mantle, the years of pain were etched plainly on her face, and she was ready for a fight if it came down to it.
“Will you give me a drink?” the stranger said cautiously, looking right into her eyes.
Shocked and without the fury of her inner disdain, she blurted, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
She knew Jewish men – she knew them all to well. Her biological father was Jew, though not a very good one. Yet, of any of the distant memories she had of him, she could vividly remember him warning her that true Jews would have nothing to do with her when she grew up. To even come in contact with one (Samaritan), she recalled, would make them (Jews) unclean and unable to worship their God. As a child, she wondered about this and why, even though she bathed most every day, they thought she was unclean. Furthermore, what kind of God would be scornful to those who so much as talked to her?
As she mulled this in the back of her mind, the man responded in turn, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“The heat has gotten to this man’s mind!” the woman chuckled to herself. Mockingly, she retorted, “Sir,” with disdainful respect, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.” Pausing, she said condescendingly, “how can you get this living water.”
She knew all about this well and the so called living water it afforded. But she also knew that to get it, you had to have almost 6 cubits of rope and very strong back to retrieve the nourishing spring that coursed at the very bottom and that kept the well full. Truly, she’d only heard about how cool and pure the living water was. If it was only up to her, she’d never have any, first hand.
Then the man met her disrespectful tone with poise and care and said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.” A giant, “duh!” must have appeared on her hardened face as he quickly continued, “but who ever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
She felt dismantled at the very thought. “Not thirsty again? If I didn’t thirst, I wouldn’t need water, and if I didn’t need water, I wouldn’t have to…”
“Sir,” now with a newfound respect, “give me this water so that I won’t have to keep coming here to draw water!”
Oh the thought of it all! No more sweaty trips to the well in the heat of the day. No more awkward looks from Sumi, Jarubi, and all those other women who mocked her very existence! Finally, she could live and love in peace!
“Go, call your husband and come back,” the stranger said matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?” she almost replied out loud. “What does he have to do with this? In fact, there’s not a he right now. There’s Jamel, but he’s not the marrying type. Oh sure, we’re having a little fun for now, but sooner or later, he’ll get tired of me and move on. They always do,” she considered.
Deflated and rather confused about the matter, she said, “I have no husband.” As the words rolled off her tongue, she could tell that they were laced with pride and independence. The fact was, she didn’t need a man – she didn’t need anyone. But deep down, she knew that her pain and loneliness had betrayed her fiery spirit. She feigned courage but offered little less than failure.
Yet, at this thought, the man – a Jewish man…a man she’d never met…a man who shouldn’t even be here – told her life story with accuracy and detail that shocked even her. And when he had finished, she found herself even lonelier than when she arrived. She felt cold, hollow, and defenseless.
At first she was amazed at what he had said, but this quickly gave way to anger as she thought, “How could he know these things? Who has he talked to?” And then it hit her – he couldn’t have known these things. He was a Jew. After all, who would talk to him? Resigned to this train of thought, she became keenly aware of two things. One, he must be some sort of prophet, some type of holy man than can see the future and the past. And two, she was about us unholy and “unreligioned” a person that ever walked the face of the earth! At this point, her only defense against his advances into her personal past was distraction.
To that end, she hurried, “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
There, she’d done it. And she’d spoken the truth – or at least as much of it as she could remember. If she couldn’t outthink him, she’d have to outwit him, and making him come face to face with his God, a God who only loved the Jews, would surely be enough to send him cowering away from the well and out of her life forever.
Not intimidated, the man pushed forward and said, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
As he spoke, memories of her father flooded her consciousness, how he used to worship his God with rituals, songs, and meals that delighted her as a child. Even from an early age, he taught her that one day, a king would come and save them all from the mess of the world. No longer would they have to live in shame and fear. No longer would they be outcasts because of their past. Indeed, the Messiah (as her dad had called him) would deliver them all and bring harmony to all the races! And yet, after he died so suddenly while she was still young, these teachings disappeared with him – and with him went her hope. Instead, she blamed the God he loved – the God she believed now to be the very same one that took away her identity, her pride, her worth. In so many ways, she was just like her dad – an outcast to the community they grew up in – in search of a family who would welcome them home. It was all so complicated and what she needed was answers.
But there was something about what he said when he mentioned the “true worshippers” that caught her attention. It sounded like everything was about to change from the way it had been. In fact, if she heard him correctly, it sounded like the Jews had been missing it just as much as her people had for all these years. It sounded just like the way her daddy talked so many years ago when he spoke of the Messiah, and the revolution of all things.
Caught up in the moment, the woman risked, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
Then, looking into her eyes once again, with all the grace a person can give another, the prophet said, “I, who speak to you, am he.”
“It’s not possible,” the woman argued with herself. “This kind of thing just doesn’t happen. I mean, you just don’t pick up your water jugs, walk to the well, and meet the Messiah!” But as she wrestled, she thought about how the man, without prompting, exposed her every sin and failure. Not only had he done so, but he did it with calm and empathy and, dare she think it, mercy.
With that, the fortress that was her heart was stormed by the fresh wind that was this man’s presence. In a moment, she was shattered, collected, and remade into something great. The burden of her life was lifted from her shoulders just as surely as the water yoke by the well. What did those old jugs matter now – they didn’t!
She’d come to the well to find drink, and she’d ended up discovering living water.
She‘d come to the well as an outcast and alone; now she’d never be alone again.
She’d come to the well full of pain and betrayal, and she’d been met with forgiveness and mercy.
She’d come to the well as a despised Samaritan woman, and she’d leave a true worshipper.
Overwhelmed, the woman smiled through teary eyes and began to walk and then run back to the village. She had to tell someone what had just happened – if for no other reason than to prove it wasn’t all a silly dream.
“Who will believe me,” she thought as she ran holding up her dress over her trotting feet. “Who will even listen to me?” as she began to slow to a jog, to a walk…the weight of her past returning to her shoulders once again like the water jugs she’d left behind in her haste. But as she stopped, her feet gained speed and purpose once again. “That doesn’t matter any more. I have to tell Sumi, Jarubi and any one else I can find about this man!”
Her lungs burned as she made it back to the village, but the stamina of her determination was steadfast and unwavering. She could tell that she was making a scene as she passed the outskirts and into the heart of town. If for nothing more that shear morbid curiosity, the people followed the lunatic woman to see what was going on.
When she finally made it to the center of the community, she doubled over and struggled to catch her breath. As she did, the concerned and curious alike gathered around her to discover why anyone, namely her, would make such an entry into their little world.
Having recovered her breath, the woman stood upright once again, only to see that almost everybody in the village was within earshot and many others right on their heals. With calm and poise, the woman replayed the last few moments in her mind. She pictured the man’s face and how he looked at her with the glory of an angel. Hadn’t he known everything about her? Hadn’t he said that all things were about to be made new? Hadn’t he said that he was The One? She knew exactly what she had to do. The Savior of the whole world – even the Samaritans – was right outside the city, and in a moment she had been changed forever.
Clearing her voice, she proclaimed, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.” Continuing in explanation, the woman gave detail of what the man had said about her shocking past. Even through the horror and shame of it all, the people knew that no outsider could know the things he knew. Pushing forward, the woman told them about what he had said about the Jews and about “true worshippers.” Confirming what was already soaring through the minds of many, the woman told them that the man told her he was the Messiah.
At this, there was an awkward pause as the crowd began to murmur and rumble with thought. Then, from the back, a young man spoke up and told the crowd that he had heard about a man in Galilee who was at a wedding and turned a bunch of water into wine when the rest had run out. Barely finishing his story, an older man added his own story about somebody named “John the baptizer” who was in the desert preaching a message of repentance and revolution. Another quickly added that his cousin had met John and that he had baptized him just last week in the Jordan. Still, another in crowd commanded all attention when he explained that he heard that John had baptized a man named Jesus, and when he did, something amazing happened, and there was light, and a dove, and a heavenly voice. The tone of the village at that moment was filled with eagerness and anticipation, as many others chimed in with stories they’d heard about a so-called Messiah.
Whoever the woman had been and whatever she had done was lost in the possibility that she had just met the Savior of them all!
Processing it all, the woman brought their exclamations to a head and asked it of them,
“Could this be the Christ?”
As you worship this week:
Meditate – on the power of an eye-witnesses testimony and how it changes the hearts and minds of those who hear it.
Contemplate – how you’ve been changed because someone invited you to come and see about this man called Jesus.
Seek – in your own heart, the courage to tell others about the Good News you already enjoy as a saved sinner.
Find – someone today you can tell your story to, and ask them, in turn, to come and see for themselves.
Resounding Themes:
Awesome, Forever God!
Come And See the Christ
What the Lord Has Done in Me
The wonderful, Powerful Body of Christ
Getting READY to Worship
Ready, Set, READ
John 4:1-42
Ready, Set, MEDITATE
- Why was Jesus leaving Galilee? Why is Jesus not baptizing? Why is that powerful? Why do you think he went through Samaria? What were the implications of this decision?
- Who does Jesus encounter at the well? Why is this scene awkward? How does the woman respond to Jesus asking her for a drink? What does the woman think about the living water Jesus mentions?
- How does Jesus take the woman off guard? What does she do to try to deflect his advances? How does Jesus re-characterize the discussion? What realization does she come to? What is her first reaction? Why is this important? What happens when she acts on her impulse to go tell the others?
- Who in our day and time are similar to the Samaritan woman? How can we respond like Jesus to their need for worth? Why is the eye-witness testimony of what God has done for us such a powerful tool for the unbeliever? Are you as willing as the Samaritan woman to share your story with others? Why or Why not?
Ready, Set, PRAY
Awkward, outcast, sinful, and scared, we come to the well to find water each day, Lord. And as we come, the horror and embarrassment of our past hangs on our shoulders like so many lead weights. And yet, You meet us at the place of change and the source of refreshment. With the depths of your love, You reach into the well of deliverance and bring forth Living Water. By that Water we are quenched to thirst no more! Thank You Jesus for rescuing us from a life of thirst and bringing us to the place of worth and strength and identity and salvation!
And as we are saved by the crucified One, let us forever sing for all to hear:
Into the river I will wadeThere my sins are washed awayFrom the heaven's mercy streamOf the Savior's love for me
AMEN and AMEN.
Ready, Set, WORSHIP!
